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Fresno has an MVP candidate in third baseman Matt Duffy, who has been with the club all season. Duffy was batting .311 with 17 home runs and a league-leading 99 RBIs.

As Fresno keeps winning, second-place Sacramento can only wonder what it has to do to catch up.

The River Cats have won a franchise record 12 games in a row, a streak that was still alive going into Saturday night. During its winning streak, Sacramento has gained exactly one game in the standings.

Other teams are streaking, too.

In the Pacific-South, El Paso went on an eight-game winning streak which ended Friday night. The Chihuahuas briefly knocked Las Vegas out of first place, but the 51s regained the top spot by a half-game with an 8-3 win over Omaha on Friday. The division title will likely come down to a head-to-head, four-game series which starts in Las Vegas on August 31.

Then there is New Orleans.

The Miami Marlins affiliate had lost 13 consecutive games — a franchise record — going into Saturday night. And it gets worse: the Zephyrs have lost 21 of their past 23 games, falling to 51-76 on the season. New Orleans was only six games under .500 when the slide began.

M’s Affiliate On Pace For Historic Low

The Clinton LumberKings have been a member of the Midwest League since 1954, but originated in 1937, when they joined the Three I League as a Brooklyn Dodgers affiliate.

Now a Seattle Mariners’ Single-A club, Clinton is on pace to break a dubious franchise record: most losses in a single season.

Clinton entered Saturday’s game against Cedar Rapids with a 39-83 record, and 17 games remaining on the schedule.

The LumberKings’ worst season ever came in 2006, when the then-Texas Rangers affiliate went 45-94.

To beat that mark, Clinton would have to go 7-10 over its final 17 games — a difficult task for a club that is 13-40 in the second half of the season, and hasn’t won more than two consecutive games since May 25.

The LumberKings have the worst record among all professional full-season teams in the major and minor leagues.